Senior Center At Harlem NYCHA Complex Spared From Closure

HARLEM, NY — The senior center at Harlem's Martin Luther King Jr. public housing complex will remain open following the City Council's decision to fund 10 centers targeted for cuts.

The City Council's fiscal year 2020 budget will allocate $2.1 million to keep senior centers at New York City Housing Authority developments open by transferring the facilities to the city Department for the Aging.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's executive budget targeted the Martin Luther King Jr. Senior Center for closure, citing low attendance numbers and its function as a "social club." But seniors who rely on the Lenox Avenue and West 112th Street center for food and social interaction said that closing the center would be a "disaster."

Seniors held rallies at the center and received the support of local politicians such as Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who wrote the city letters demanding that the centers be funded instead of closed down.

Brewer told Patch that she didn't trust the city's assessment of the center as under-utilized and said that the budget savings from cutting the services would have been "minimal."

"This center has got to continue. DFTA, NYCHA always use that 'underutilized' excuse," Brewer said in a previous interview. "They have activities here, they have meals here and they're known. People will stay in their apartments, they won't go to the other center. They'll get depressed, and they'll die."

The city planned to offer bus service to seniors from the Martin Luther King Jr. complex to another senior center on West 120th Street. Gail Smalls, the vice chair at the center, said that many of its regular clients would not have been able to afford the transportation. Smalls also said buses wouldn't be able to help the many King Towers residents who are homebound and have meals delivered from the current center.